Buying a TVR would be suicide wouldn't it?

Originally designed as a LeMans car it clocked in at over 1000BHP and had to be detuned before they would allow it on the track.

My fav car of all time - totally obscene!
 
lovely lovely car - would be great to own it but tbh i doubt i'd ever get anywhere near to doing it justice :(

remeber finally getting my grubby mits on it in GT2 and not being able to keep the damn thing on the track for love nor money!
 
EddScott said:
I read an article regarding this car and IIRC one of the guys in charge at the time drove it home as a mini test.

Got home, rang the others and said "We can't build this car for the general public"

Or words to that effect.
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Yep, though unfortunately it was because he (Peter Wheeler) found that you just couldn't put the power down on the road.
 
Wikipedia said:
The TVR Speed 12, originally known as the Project 7/12 was a very high performance concept vehicle designed by TVR in 1997. Based in part on then-current TVR hardware, the vehicle was intended to be both the world's highest performance road car and the basis for a GT1 class Le Mans racer. Unfortunately, problems during its development, changing GT1 class regulations and the eventual decision that it was simply incapable of being used as a road car ended the idea, forcing TVR executives to abandon its development.

In an interview Peter Wheeler, who owned TVR during the car's development, said that TVR had tried to record the car's power on an engine dyno. The dyno was rated at 1000 bhp but the test resulted in the dyno's input shaft being broken. To get an approximate figure TVR engineers tested the engine again but they tested each bank individually; the result was 480 bhp per bank. This would suggest a rating of 960 bhp in total. Although this didn't provide an exact figure, it was far closer than the original estimates were. The real figure is still unknown. Peter Wheeler drove one of the finished prototypes home and he concluded that the car was unusable on the road, in his opinion it was simply too powerful. Wheeler was no newcomer to high performance cars, he even raced in the TVR Tuscan challenge for a number of seasons.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TVR_Speed_12
 
On the flip side, it makes the Bugatti Veyron seem like even more of an achievement: sticking that much power down on the road and being comfortable at the same time...?

However, if I was in the position to buy either of them, I would certainly have a punt for the Speed 12. Nothing like British sportscars on LSD, speed and crack at the same time for getting the pulse racing. Yes, it is possibly the ugliest thing I've ever seen but I doubt that really matters.
 
mrthingyx said:
On the flip side, it makes the Bugatti Veyron seem like even more of an achievement: sticking that much power down on the road and being comfortable at the same time...?
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but you have to consider the development methodology of each computer - TVR pretty much have pencils and paper, a ruler if their lucky and VW spent god know how much developing the Veyron?

But as you say, sod confort driving something like that HAS to be a hoot (even if its straight into the nearest hedge)
 
mrthingyx said:
On the flip side, it makes the Bugatti Veyron seem like even more of an achievement: sticking that much power down on the road
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The Veyron having 4wd and over twice the weight.....
IIRC the car is running 'softer' cams with 880bhp, lost 80bhp or so from the more aggressive cams :cool: (trying to remember from the EVO article I read ages ago)
 
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